


House of Canyons

by tiersein



Series: Helichoidal [4]
Category: Dinotopia - James Gurney
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-06
Updated: 2011-11-06
Packaged: 2017-10-25 18:43:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiersein/pseuds/tiersein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaak, ten years old, has just (finally!) made friends with a skybax but his parents don't seem to have noticed. They want to take him across the island to Waterfall City. WORK IN PROGRESS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	House of Canyons

Saul lay flat aboard Tarmac so that he could see nothing but the great broad wings to either side as they soared easily five thousand necks above the desert. He often did this on council days, when the stationmasters and instructors came together to reach agreements over spiced fruit dumplings and grog. Being only an ecosystems instructor, Saul had got the idea after his first attendance to one of these meetings that it really ought to be his last, and so it had been.

He closed his eyes as Tarmac caught a thermal and wondered, once again, if Tarmac cared that he had no authority over the humans anymore. The skybax community didn't seem to have a proper government as the humans did, but how, really, was he to know? He was just an airship boy come late to the ever-so-sacred craft of harnessed pterosaurs.

He knew his sarcastic thoughts were unfair to Tarmac, of course, but didn't let that stop him. It was best to give these moods their wings, to let them flap on to bother someone else. Saul flexed his toes in his boots and felt suddenly quite stiff; how late was it? how long had he been here?

He dozed, securely harnessed, until the pterosaur's descent brought him back to the here-and-now. They were angling for the platform nearest Master Balam's apartments, clearly, but Saul could see two skybax already tucked in with wings folded on the space. Tarmac sliced the air as he swooped past, silent, not bothering to chide them to make room.

Braced for the landing, Saul slid to the ground nearby and unwound the harness with a wordless song of gratitude for the weary Tarmac. Hours aflight wasn't something to be taken for granted; none of this, for Saul, would ever be taken for granted. Why the massive, senior skybax had anything to do with him, Saul didn't know, but he wasn't going to ever for a moment expect it to be there. Every day Tarmac greeted him, whether to bear him aloft or not, was a glorious day.

Saul tucked the harness under his arm and went down to the balcony, chirruping greetings to Nightwing and Abigale on the balcony. He went in to find their master partners, but the sound of Rostya's voice gave him pause.

"There simply isn't an option, and you'd do well to trust your father. The council will have no--

"I hope the council all hits wind shear at fifteen-thousand necks," Kaak snapped back, clearly angry. Saul's heart sank. The boy had been on edge, warring against his father, for several months. "I don't want to go!"

Saul stepped into the room and Kaak fell silent immediately, rising to his feet, his face angry and sad at the same time. Betrayed, even. And ... near tears?

"Shall I, Rostya?"

"Please." The other master looked like he'd flown a full day in bad weather. Well, hadn't he? Any flier worth his wings would fly through ten thunderstorms before braving Council politics.

"Come, Kaak. Shall we walk?"

The boy had struck Saul as particularly mature for his age, though perhaps that was because he lacked an overabundance of carefree youngsters with whom to cavort. Kaak befriended other rider children and spent his free time in the hatchery, offering a spare pair of hands for injured fliers and a careful, kind, watchful eye for unhatched eggs.

Now he rose and swallowed back tears; Saul placed an affectionate hand on the back of the boy's neck as Kaak passed, and followed him out to the balcony.

Kaak didn't say it's not fair or go in for any other raging generalities.

"My father promised he'd let me join the beginner's course this summer, but he lied. Then he said I could sit in on the beginner's course with the Olympians this fall. Now Master Oolu's teaching it instead and he said he'd be off to Ebulon and he wouldn't let me go along there either. And now he wants to go to be stationmaster at Waterfall City, and take mother and I along, and she thinks it's a wonderful idea."

Saul beckoned him along down the path to get out of earshot from the balcony. Tarmac raised his head from where he dozed, waiting, and watched Kaak with interest. "You knew this might happen, lad. You know that responsibility comes with the privilege of wings. What's the real problem?"

Kaak sniffled and audibly swallowed down a sob. Saul sighed and pulled him over to a stone seat against the wall, sitting down next to him and wrapping an arm around the boy's shoulders. "All right, all right. It's going to be okay."

The laugh this got him was pitiful. "It's really not," Kaak said miserably. "He won't even hear about Altanden. He won't even meet him. He wants to take me away from him."

Saul made a sympathetic noise. "I see," he said, wondering if he did. Wondering what questions he ought to ask to get Kaak to see what he suspected was the case: Balam had fought council before to get out of stationmaster positions. What had happened that day in the meeting?

"When did you bring up Altanden to him, son?" he asked quietly, gently. Balam was a fiercely dedicated and gregarious man who sometimes had trouble making time for Kaak, who'd turned out to have far more of Ixchel's quiet, reserved, deeply introspective nature. Certainly Kaak had kept secret his adventures with the skybax he'd befriended -- so why now, and how, had he gone about divulging that secret to his very distracted father?

Kaak sniffled. "A few weeks ago, at dinner. I said I'd met him in the hatchery. I wanted to keep working up there. He just said. That. That I ought to be careful not to put my heart into a creature that maybe I didn't understand. That I had plenty of time."

"You do, you know," Saul said gently. Kaak made a little miserable sound, but Saul couldn't tell if it was protest or agreement. "And he's never met Altanden, has he? So how could he know how you are together?"

"But I told him again last month and again this morning, before council meeting." Kaak looked down. "Saul, he wants us to go to Waterfall City. They need healers there too and mother sounded like she agreed."

"Mmm," Saul murmured, to cover his surprise. "Well, it would take your parents far from the politics, that's for sure. And you don't want to go?"

"I do, but. What if I go away and Altanden finds someone else and he's, he's not here when I get back? What do I do?"

Saul was struck by the similarities between this tentative, budding relationship of what was clearly an accepted future skybax rider and his own odd position in Canyon City, riding as he did a skybax who'd lost a partner and chosen him from an airship depot on a whim. He knew well the fear of coming back to find out Tarmac had found someone more suited to the life. Even twelve years later, he still wasn't really sure where he stood.

And poor Kaak hadn't even flown with Altanden yet.

Well, maybe he should remedy that.

"I worry about that every day," Saul finally said aloud, though softly. "I've seen you and Altanden together. I don't think you have anything to worry about but I know that doesn't convince you right now. I'll try and talk to your father. There will be options for you, I promise."

"I don't want options." Kaak screwed up his face and blinked back more tears. "I just want to be a rider. I want to be Altanden's rider. He--" Kaak broke off, looking down at his feet. Saul let him gather the words. "He said," and Saul couldn't follow for a moment the boy's train of thought. Who said? Oh, Balam. "He said Altanden wasn't a name he'd ever heard, and he wanted to know who named him, and when I said I did, he said then I'd better not be too attached to it because Altanden's rider would have another name for him when he chose."

Saul sighed deeply. Oh, Balam was under much more stress than he'd thought, to make such an error in front of his son.

"Except, he didn't say Altanden's rider," Kaak continued, the real fury of one deeply wounded by betrayal coming out in his voice. "He said whomever harnesses that bax as if it's a matter of harnessing and as if Altanden didn't choose me."

And, with that, Saul knew that nothing Rostya nor Balam could say tonight would repair any of the damage. This was not a canyon to be bridged in a day.

"I will talk to them," he promised. "Tonight, and no later. And your mother, too. Have you told her?"

"She was kind about it but she didn't understand." Kaak wiped his eyes with his white sleeve, then frowned at the dirty streak he left on it and admitted, in a low miserable voice, "I feel so silly crying about it."

"Never feel silly about crying," Saul told him. "Crying's healthy. I've cried, too, over Tarmac and the council. Here-- why don't you go on to Roon's for dinner? I'll tell your parents where you've gone and try to talk to them about it all."

Kaak looked even more miserable. "What do I tell him? I don't want to go out looking like this."

Saul huffed a laugh. "To the rookery with you, then. But you need to eat, so grab a bite from the duty hearth on your way up."

The look of doubtful relief Kaak gave him gladdened his heart. The boy pushed up from the bench and Saul realized again, seeing the bags under Kaak's eyes along with the defeated posture, just how young ten years old really was. Kaak spoke so well, for all that it was so rarely, that he could mingle with adults and hold his own with a minimum of irritation. Saul smiled his support and waved him on.

"Thank you," Kaak said, looking bashful.

"It's what I'm here for, lad. Always. What are nestfathers for? Now, go on. I'll be at the duty hearth at dawn if you'll meet me there, but I won't hold it against you if you elect to sleep in instead."

Kaak gave him a grateful smile, bowed solemnly to Tarmac, and turned on his heel to make for the heights. Hopefully he'd find Altanden after running up the steep staircase and throw himself down, to sleep off all his anxieties.

Saul turned to Tarmac and wished, for the millionth time, that those wise eyes came attached to a beak that spoke a human language. Then he got up and went in to negotiate a settlement between the turbulent emotional territories occupied by a father and his son.


End file.
